


i know that it is freezing but i think we have to walk

by honeykaspbrak



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: ADHD, Anxiety, Big feelings, Bisexual Carl Gallagher, Canon Divergence, Complicated Emotions, Depression, Drinking, Drug Use, Hospitals, Mental Illness, Multi, Sadness, Smoking, Suicide Attempt, Talking, angst :(, heavily carl centric, i just am so fucking emo about carl u don’t even know, kids having trouble :(, mickey is good, panic disorder, sibling relationships, this is 14 year old carl, underage drinking and drug use, yall knoooow he’s my favorite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeykaspbrak/pseuds/honeykaspbrak
Summary: like that thanksgiving when monica slit her wrists and ian was trying to cover carl’s eyes when they all found her sitting there but he still saw how sticky-thick and red the blood pooling from her arms was. he hasn’t managed to forget that.it is winter in south chicago and carl is this close to falling off the edge.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS: mental health issues, substance abuse, suicide attempt. please be careful!!
> 
> title is from the saddest and most beautiful bright eyes song, lua.

ian told carl that white lighters are bad luck once, but carl uses one anyways. he actually thinks that’s kinda cool, especially when he told donnie rodriguez at school “ _yeah, it’s supposedly cursed_ ” when he asked for a light, and donnie’s eyebrows went up all impressed. carl’s drawn on it with a black sharpie, so a messy skull and crossbones intercept with a handful of wilting flowers that curve around to the backside which reads _property of carl gallagher_. he’s sort of proud of it, and at the very least it keeps anyone from taking it. carrying the smooth bic around in his pocket makes him feel like an adult in a small, funny way. lip’s lighter is the old-fashioned silver kind because he’s a little bit of an pretentious douche and likes to remind people of that. fiona’s is glittery red, a gift from veronica. ian has a bunch, but carl usually just sees mickey milkovich lighting ian’s cigarettes with his own scratched-up black bic. carl thinks that maybe you can tell a fair bit about people based on their lighters.

anyways, he’s walking home from school with his backpack full of homework that he won’t do (unless ian offers to help, and even then probably not) and popping the unlucky white lighter to ignite the end of his marlboro in the one smooth motion that lip taught him, when he hears the gunshot. it’s not unusual in this part of the city, not by a long shot, but it sounds _close_ , and that makes carl’s heart jump into his throat. 

his first thought is _fiona_ , because he knows she’s alone in the house (debbie is still in class, because the high school lets out an hour later, lip and ian are working, and liam is gone at head start at least until it starts getting dark), and that jerks him into motion. he shoves the lighter into the pocket of his parka (it used to be ian’s and finally fits him in the wrists) and takes off at a run down the sidewalk, in the direction of the shot. 

carl wishes ian was here, because ian can run likes he’s fucking superman after all the years of ROTC training and carl already has a stitch in his side. he considers stopping and just calling fiona to make sure everything’s okay, but the minutes on his shitty phone are dwindling fast and he’s only a block and a half away from the house at this point. 

when he makes it up the front steps and kicks the door open hard enough that it bangs against the house’s drywall, he’s managed to convince himself that he’ll find fiona laying on the kitchen floor in a puddle of blood. like that thanksgiving when monica slit her wrists and ian was trying to cover carl’s eyes when they all found her sitting there but he still saw how sticky-thick and red the blood pooling from her arms was. he hasn’t managed to forget that.

“ _carl?_ what the hell?” it’s fiona, in one piece with no blood in sight, sitting up from the couch. that sleep mask is pushed up on her forehead and carl kind of wants to run over and hug her and his heart is thrumming away in his chest so hard that it makes him feel all lightheaded. “are you okay?”

“did you hear those gunshots?” carl’s voice is wheezy with exertion. fiona’s forehead is creased like he hasn’t seen it since last summer when lip got so drunk that they couldn’t get him off the floor for a full twelve hours. 

“yeah, but those are nothing new… did you see something, carl?” she scrambles off the couch and crosses the living room towards him in a couple of long strides. fiona’s palms pressed to his cheeks is carl’s first solid memory. he’s suddenly exhausted. 

“no, i just… i got scared.” fiona breathes out in a short sigh. it’s cold in the house (shitty central heating) and the wind outside has picked up. it’s probably gonna snow before this night is over. 

“shit, kid, it’s okay. it was probably terry milkovich. don’t worry about it, alright?” carl’s chest squeezes ( _he cannot get the picture of fiona in monica’s place out of his mind he cannot stop seeing the blood_ ). 

“okay.” he says, even though it isn’t, and she doesn’t get it, but it’s not like it’s fair to expect her to because carl doesn’t even get it himself. fuck. he runs past fiona and up the stairs, leaving her there with bewilderment etched into her forehead. 

 

he falls asleep in ian’s bed and feels mostly better when he wakes up later to the early winter dark. less jumpy and throttled-out. but there’s still something nagging inside him, something unsettling that he can’t exactly put his finger on. he swallows it down hard as he climbs out of bed and trades his jeans for a pair of pajama pants that smell clean enough. 

 

dinner is KFC, picked up by ian on his way home from the job he has at the mechanic over on twenty fifth. carl knows from listening in on a conversation with mickey, when they were drinking in the kitchen and didn’t notice him watching tv out on the couch, that the manager stares at ian and gave him a five percent raise for letting him feel him up. carl thinks that, aside from the creepiness, it’s pretty awesome, really. in mickey’s words, ian’s “a regular ass tycoon.”

carl also thinks it’s awesome how mickey doesn’t seem to get jealous when ian is telling him this. he knows mickey sucks ian’s dick in the bathroom when they think everyone else has gone to bed, and he’s willing to bet that they’re probably dating too. there’s another thing carl thinks is awesome - his brother bagging the toughest boy in the yards. 

the chicken is delicious, and, speak of the devil, mickey milkovich is leaning against the counter and tucking into a thigh. carl inhales two wings and a breast and chugs some coke straight out of the bottle (debbie yells at him for that). he notices fiona looking sideways at him. lip too, like she told him something in that annoying, oldest-sibling way they have of snitching to each other on everyone in the house. like they’re the parents. 

carl turns away from them and digs into the side of macaroni that mickey holds out to him. 

 

it does snow in the night, big, icy globs of it, and carl wakes up into a bleached-white and glowing world with debbie walloping him upside the head with a pillow. 

“ _snow day!_ ” she yells in his face, and carl can’t even be pissed at her because he’s so excited. 

ian and mandy milkovich are making pancakes downstairs, which fills carl with this surging, sunny happiness. because snow days are fucking _epic_ , and when mandy sets down a plate of pancakes in front of carl she ruffles his hair, and ian looks so happy and is kind of half-dancing to no music (he’s got the day off too), and everything in the kitchen feels light and easy. 

ian is trying to pour the batter into different shapes (“look, mickey mouse, and, hey! that one looks like a whale!”) and mandy is leaning over the counter to look into the pan and laugh at him. they’re best friends, which seems really cool to carl. all his friends are guys, and they wouldn’t ever want to make pancakes or come over for movie marathons like ian and mandy do all the time. 

if you want to get technical with it, carl doesn’t really have any friends he’d consider _close._ which is okay with him, perfectly fine. but looking at mandy and ian, laughing with their mouth open as she takes the spatula from him and performs a weak pancake flip that’s still better than any of ian’s, makes carl wonder what that feels like. 

that feeling passes fast though, when debbie comes running down the stairs with liam in her arms. carl never actually told her, but he likes her shoulder length hair. he doesn’t think fiona should’ve made the deal out of it that she did. 

“pancakes!” liam garbles as debbie sets him down on the ground and reaches directly into ian’s pan to grab one (it’s the whale one, carl thinks - huh, abstract). ian swats her with the spatula, and she’s tossing the hot pancake from hand to hand and squealing, and mandy is saying _“that’s what you get!”_ in this nice voice, and everyone in the room just bursts into laughter. 

carl really loves snow days. 

 

later, when he’s home from his (non-cancelled) busboy job, lip takes liam to the abandoned lot down the block to make a snowman. debbie and carl go with them under the premise of tagging along, because 14 and 15 are too old to _want_ to make a snowman, pfft. 

the snow isn’t especially pretty at this point, sort of slushy and grey along all the streets and sidewalks, but they still have a great fucking time hurling wet snowballs at each other and falling backwards into banks of it and searching through someone’s backyard for arms for liam’s snowman. 

when the sun has started coming down and debbie is sitting with liam on her lap, talking to him and watching the sky go colorful in the distance, lip pulls carl off to the side.

carl’s already got a sinking feeling about it, like that time lip confronted him about stealing those porn magazines from the kash-and-grab a few years back, and he managed to make the whole thing so embarrassing and uncomfortable that carl was praying the ground would swallow him up. he really likes lip better when he’s not trying to be some sort of father figure. 

“hey,” lips says, sliding a cigarette out of his pack and holding it out for carl to light, “i just wanna ask you about something.” ah, fuck. carl runs through his mental list of all the bad shit he’s done recently. jerking off in the bathroom at school, but there’s no way lip could know about _that_. stealing a twenty from the squirrel fund for weed, maybe that’s it. 

“fiona said that when you came home yesterday you were acting really weird? is something up?” oh my _god_ , carl wants to tear his own face off. he can’t have one momentary lapse in this place without everyone and their mother getting up his ass about it. 

“i’m fuckin’ fine.” carl says, sullen. he can already feel himself shutting down. he doesn’t wanna fucking _talk_ about it, but leave it to fiona and lip to gossip and corner him like a goddamn dog. 

“she said you were really nervous. you were scared by the gunshots?” and they’ve got the fucking story twisted, making him seem like some absolutely pathetic bitchass. 

“i- i wasn’t _scared_ , jesus, i just- i just wanted to make sure fiona was okay cause you guys weren’t at home…” he trails off, aware that it sounds ridiculous. shots go off in their neighborhood ten times a day, easy. if everyone reacted like that every time it would be fucking crazy. carl gets it, his reaction was irrational. he can’t explain why he got so afraid. 

and he’s sure as hell not gonna try with lip looking at him all condescendingly. 

“you’re not my fucking dad, man.” carl says, spits in the snow at lip’s feet as he turns around to walk home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's, like, a normal schedule to update on?? i'm bad at this. i just restarted the show for the third time and episode one makes me feel so much. god, i love tiny ian. i love them all. 
> 
> anyways, back to our regularly scheduled programming: absolutely tearing carl apart with angst :(

ian is playing this sad ass mixtape in the car as he drives carl to school, and it’s making carl’s sleep-deprived eyes heavier than ever as he slouches over in the passenger seat.

“late night?” ian glances over at him with a snort.

“yeah, jerking off into your morning coffee.” he can feel ian rolling his eyes without looking at him. 

“ugh, fuck you.” he says, good naturedly, and changes the song on the stereo to an even sadder sounding one. it’s probably a mandy mix. no one has ever made carl a mixtape before. 

carl really didn’t get much sleep (by the time he was finally drifting off the sun was starting to come up and his alarm for school would be going off in an hour), and if he did jerk off in order to fill some insomniac time, well, that’s his business. he just couldn’t settle down, and   
he doesn’t have any idea _why_. he’s been on edge since the whole running-home-to-gunfire thing, and that happened days ago now. 

whatever. it’s not like he’s going to bring it up with anyone. 

he just stares out the passenger-side window at the sad melting city, all dirty with day-old snow receding and revealing the trash and broken bottles and cracked sidewalks it once hid. winter in this place is depressing as fuck, carl thinks. god. he likes the sun, the months where he can sit on the roof and smoke as late as he wants to without freezing his ass off in the bitter sleet. he’s never been a morning person or a winter person. 

“how’s school going?” ian asks him, like his older siblings all held some kind of meeting where they decided they’d be as prying and annoying as possible from here on out. fuck if carl is showing concern to any of them ever again. 

“it’s fine.” ian doesn’t deserve to have carl be a prick to him. carl _knows_ this, but can’t seem to corral the irritation that’s building up in his knuckles and knees. 

“that’s good.” ian rolls down his window, even though it’s cold as fuck outside and carl is already shivering in the badly-heated car. 

school is shitty. he’s behind in all his classes, behind enough that he’s actually worried about not graduating eighth grade and having to do the year over again. it just doesn’t _work_ for him. he’s not like lip, who can practically memorize pages of text from reading them over once, or who has understood calculus, like, since he could walk. and he’s not like ian, who’s personal essay about growing up with frank as a father won some kind of award when he was a sophomore. fiona, high school dropout but unbelievably street, money, business, people smart. carl doesn’t have any of that. 

ian’s picked up on it a little, is doing his best to help carl get his grades up, but he’s only slightly less abysmal in math and there’s _absolutely no way_ carl is going to lip about it. he just tries not to think about it. it’s not like it’ll matter for another six months anyways - not like anyone in his house is looking at his mid-year report card.

but even if carl’s grades weren’t tanking, school would be shitty. it’s probably just a rite of passage to have an awful middle school experience (ian and lip say so), but, god, carl just wants it to end. he’s not the kind of kid the others like. _carl from the yards. heard he broke someone’s ribcage. fucked up gallagher family. steer clear._ fuck them. and he didn’t break anyone’s ribs. just a nose. 

ian pulls the van into a messy parallel park a block and a half from the school and reaches over to clap carl on the shoulder. 

“hope your day’s okay.” that’s something carl likes about ian. fiona would’ve said _have a good day!_ even when they both know there’s no way he would. ian’s sentiment seems truer. carl smiles at him. 

“you too.” everyone says ian and debbie are similar (it’s the red hair and how their laughs sound and nothing else) but carl thinks it’s more like ian and him. 

he tries not to slam the car door when he gets out but it sort of happens anyways, closing in the ballad weeping from the stereo in a sudden vacuum. 

 

carl’s landed himself in detention by the time third period rolls around. something about his history teacher having a stick up her ass and carl saying as much to his desk partner and her overhearing and pursing her lips into a thin, angry line as she scribbled out the detention slip. fuck. fiona won’t be happy about it, but maybe he can just tell her he went to a friend’s house, or into the city to see ian at work. 

that’s carl’s problem; he doesn’t think through the stupid shit he says in advance, and that gets him in trouble. 

the rest of the day is boring and blurry. the building is cold (public school in the poorest county in the area) and the lights in his earth science classroom keep blinking on and off. carl’s hungry (he didn’t eat before he left the house, because the only things in the fridge besides beer were a jar of pickles, some condiments, and a half-full container of dodgy smelling eggs) and his brain isn’t tracking the things his teachers are scribbling on the boards. nothing new, but it’s not a good day. 

 

he texts debbie when school ends: _got detention. be home like 5_ and trudges through the cold to the building where they hold detention, in a math classroom that smells like piss. 

by the time he’s taken a seat, way in the back behind this sixth grader who’s twice carl’s size, his phone is buzzing with a litany of texts back from debbie.

_carl ur a fucking idiot_

_what’d u do this time??_

_if u wanna get out i can call and pretend it’s an emergency_

_i’ll say our mom is giving birth like as we speak_

carl snorts at the little glowing screen. he knows she’d do it if he asked. he responds, typing under the desk even though the teacher monitoring the room seems so out of it that carl could probably pull out a joint and smoke it right here without him noticing. 

_lol they’d probably believe that_

_don’t worry about it though. it’s just an hour_

his phone buzzes a second later, and the sixth grader looks back at him. carl gives him a tight-lipped smile and goes back to texting. 

_“those fucking gallaghers breed like rabbits”_ debbie’s sent, quoting their elementary school principal from the infamous 2011 back-to-school-night incident. he sends back the crying-laughing emoji and shuts off his cell and shoves it into his back pocket.

okay. another 55 minutes. he folds his hands in front of himself on the table. detention is just boring as hell, that’s the real issue carl has with it. like, you can do homework and nothing else, and it’s not as if he’s gonna do _that_. 

he doesn’t remember putting his head down on the sticky, pencil-eraser smelling desk, but then it’s there, and his eyes are too heavy to keep open. he gives into it. there are worse ways to spend an hour. 

_he sits in the passenger seat of a dark car that he doesn’t recognize, shoeless and sleepy. it’s ian next to him. he knows it’s ian because of the freckled hands on the steering wheel and the music (ian music) wailing from the stereo, but he can’t seem to turn his neck enough to see his brother’s face._

_carl stares straight ahead out the windshield. they’re on a winding road that isn’t lit by any streetlamps that he can see, but is illuminated in a pale, ghastly glow. it’s like moonlight, but carl can’t see the moon._

_ian, he says, but his voice is strange in his own ears. and he still can’t turn his head to see him. the music gets louder, in a big, jarring jump instead of the smooth crescendo of turning up the stereo. carl tries to throw his hand out to turn it down, but he cannot move. ian? he says again, voice rising with panic. still nothing, only the music growing louder and louder and carl’s own heartbeat thronging in his ears._

_and, the car - is it speeding up? carl’s frozen, staring straight ahead as bass boosts all around him and the weird ghastly landscapes hurtle past them._

_faster and faster and louder and faster and louder until carl is so overwhelmed he feels like he might burst. he’s screaming, or he feels like he is, but he can’t hear a thing over the music that seems to be flooding straight into his pores. ian, his lips form soundlessly, and then his neck finally snaps into movement, swinging around like he’s whiplashed but it’s not ian sitting in the driver’s seat any more, it’s someone with dark pits for eyes and carl can barely tear his streaming eyes away before the car hurtles off something so tall it’s endless._

“carl! _carl!_ ” he flies up off the desk that’s slick with sweat in the shape of his handprints and cheek, heart pounding so hard he feels like he’s about to vomit. he woke up falling. he woke up _dying_. there’s a girl who’s in his home room standing over him, her eyes all huge and worried. everyone else in the room is turned towards him, silent with concern written all over their faces. carl can’t breathe. 

“you were screaming.” the girl says. he can’t, for the life of her, remember her name. he just wants everyone in this goddamn room to stop _staring_. he catches sight of the teacher on the phone out of the corner of his eye, watching carl like he’s a flight risk and speaking in a low, serious tone. oh god. carl needs to get out of here. he stands, pushing his chair back with a clatter as his chest heaves. the girl steps back like she’s scared of him and he _just keeps seeing_ ian’s face morphing into that dead eyed thing. 

“wait, carl, i’ve called your sister.” the teacher says, and if carl could feel anything but terror he’d be so embarrassed he’d just dissolve into the floor. he grabs his bag and his cell phone from where it’s slipped from his pocket onto the floor (missed texts from debbie, fiona, and ian, _jesus_ ) and leaves the claustrophobic classroom as fast as he can. 

 

he can’t go home. he knows that for sure. because, he thinks, if one single person tries to confront him about whatever the hell kind of freak lapse happened in detention, he’ll fly apart and go jump off the canal street bridge. he can’t go home. 

he’s running down the street because if he runs his chest and eyes burn for a different reason and he feels a little less like he’s about to combust. somewhere along the way his feet find the path to the milkovich house and he just goes with it. it’s as good a place for this as any; mickey will keep his mouth shut. 

carl staggers up the porch steps and pounds on the front door with its peeling paint with his whole fist and thinks, for an awful moment, that no one will open it. but then, thank god, mickey milkovich is throwing it open, shirtless and smoking, cursing until his eyes land on carl’s. 

“shit, kid.” carl must look about as wrecked as he feels. mickey steps back like he doesn’t know exactly what he should be doing and ushers carl past him into the house that’s thick with the smell of B.O. and pot. “what happened?”

“don’t call my family.” is the first thing carl says, flopping down on the cluttered sofa because the run has finally caught up to his legs and he’s not sure he can stay standing. 

“i won’t.” mickey says, sounding bewildered as he sits down across from carl and offers him the smoke. carl takes it, grateful to have something to do with his hands and mouth. he’s so unbelievably glad for mickey, for his surly acceptance of the south side rules, for keeping carl’s secrets without asking why. ian made a good choice with him. “are you, like, okay?” 

carl, sweating, strips off his coat and ignores his still-buzzing phone in the pocket. it sounds super fucking stupid to say it aloud. he had a nightmare. but he’s somehow so shaken up by it that he feels like he doesn’t have control over himself. 

“something… weird happened in detention.” he says slowly, passing the cig back to mickey. 

“weird how?” mickey asks. carl notices a handful of hickeys sprinkled over his neck and chest, and it alleviates some of the awful tension in his chest. ha. his big brother and the neighborhood thug. 

“i had this, y’know, dream. but i couldn’t… fucking move? and the kids in the classroom said i was screaming before i woke up?” mickey’s brow is furrowing, deeper and deeper, as carl talks. “it felt like i was gonna, god, fucking die.” 

“like, ah, fuckin’ sleep paralysis?” mickey asks hesitantly, puffing on the cigarette. carl considers that. 

“i don’t know. i don’t really know anything about that. i just felt… bad, and sick.” 

“did you take anything?” mickey asks, still with this look on his face that kinda scares carl cause he hasn’t seen mickey _worried_ since ian almost blew a finger off at training and they all piled into the van to go to the hospital and mickey was sweating and couldn’t stay still in the backseat. 

“no, nothin’.” carl swallows dry. he could really use a beer. “not even weed for, like,” he calculates it in his head, “72 hours.” 

“huh.” mickey says, rubbing a palm over his five o’clock shadow. “your siblings know?”

“yeah, that’s the problem. the goddamn teacher called fiona. they’re all texting.”

“and you don’t wanna talk about it, so you’re not going home.” mickey fills in. he _gets_ it, and that makes carl cold with relief. 

“yeah, exactly.” 

“okay.” mickey says. carl could hug him. “want a drink?” 

yeah, carl really does. 

 

“mickey milkovich, open the _goddamn fucking door_!” _shit_. they’ve arrived. carl dives down off the couch with his second beer in his hand. 

“mickey, don’t you dare open the goddamn fucking door.” he hisses through his teeth. mickey looks between carl and the door and back to him like he’s at a loss. carl tries to beg him with his eyes; he can’t have this interaction. 

“mick.” oh shit. ian. carl can _see_ mickey weaken. “mick, c’mon, let us in.” mickey looks over at carl with this meaningful look on his face that carl can’t really decipher. carl shakes his head, _come on_. 

“go out the back.” mickey whispers. “i’ll give ya a head start.” 

_fuck_ , fine. carl guesses the boyfriend wins out over the boyfriend’s psycho little brother. he can’t really blame mickey. 

“thanks, mickey.” he mutters, then grabs up his stuff and his beer and makes a break for the back of the house. 

as he opens the back door as quietly as he can, he hears ian and fiona’s overlapping, scared voices, and mickey lying as expertly as if he hasn’t seen carl a day in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hsjshsjsh i can't tell if this is really fucking boring and entirely lacking continuity or not ? i'm just gonna keep plowing ahead anyways.
> 
> and, not that anyone asked for it, but here are a few carl songs for all u lovely people:  
> 1\. we will rock you - queen  
> 2\. silly boy - the blue van  
> 3\. i'll be anything - flatsound   
> 4\. kids with guns - gorillaz   
> 5\. if winter ends - bright eyes
> 
> i'm still in Shock and Awe that anyone actually reads my stuff that's sosososo cool thank you al!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> christ i restarted shameless and you know that season one episode “killer carl”? THAT SHIT BREAKS MY HEART!! just the “budding psychopath”, “he’ll end up with a sniper rifle in a clock tower” things? no one actually takes him seriously!! there’s clearly something going on with him and yet! i’m so fucking sad i’ve always loved his character but going back and paying extra attention to him shows just how ? swept aside his issues are the whole damn time

he knows, realistically, that he’ll have to go home at some point tonight or they’re going to end up calling the police. but, still, he stretches it out until the sun is so long gone that even the now-tiny banks of snow don’t hold any light. carl’s glad when his phone dies and the endless barrage of texts (now from all four of his older siblings; they’ve gotten lip in on it, _perfect_ , and kev and veronica) stops all at once. it’s a relief.

he’s sitting under an overpass and the train screeches deafeningly above his head every so often. he should go home - he’s cold, damp through, and so thirsty he’s considering eating the piss-colored snow that lays in drifts around the pillars that hold up the bridge. he should go home. 

it’s just… he knows how this goes. it’s fiona crying when he walks in the door, running to him and holding his face and patting him down every inch to make sure he isn’t hurt. it’s lip and/or ian sitting down on his bed late for a meaningful _talk_. it’s whispered conversations between the older ones after they think he’s asleep, about everything that’s wrong with him. it’s nothing he feels equipped to deal with. 

but, again, that’s how this goes. carl stands up, brushes wet dirt off his hands, and sets out walking in the direction of home. 

 

“fuckin’ a.” kevin booms the minute carl opens the back door. he, along with lip and debbie, are sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee out in front of them. lip stands up fast enough that his sloshes out onto the stained tablecloth. 

“ _carl_. jesus. we were fucking scared.” his voice is angry, but in some kind of way that makes carl thinks he’s more upset than mad. he crosses the kitchen in a few quick strides and grabs carl by the shoulders. “what the fuck were you thinking?” 

“he wasn’t.” debbie says. she’s looking at carl with these big, frightened eyes and carl’s stomach turned over. there’s always been something about his relationship with debbie (only a year apart, time together in foster homes, the ones stuck in the middle) that makes him feel like shit for hurting her. 

“sorry.” carl murmurs, addressing all of them at once. “i’m sorry.” 

lip gives him this mournful look that carl can’t quite place (wait - it’s the look he gives frank when he’s passed out on the floor somewhere; pity and quiet resentment) then shoves him lightly in the shoulder. “christ.”

“well, fiona and ian and mandy are still out there looking for you.” debbie says, looking at her mug and not carl. “we better call them and tell ‘em you’re home.” 

“do you wanna explain what happened?” lip asks in that same angry-afraid voice. carl stands looking at him for a moment (during which kev gets up and fetches four beers from the fridge) then turns to walk up the stairs. 

“carl-” debbie starts, then shuts up quick like someone put a hand over his mouth. 

“i’m taking a shower.” carl mutters, leaving them there behind him in a suddenly-silent room. 

 

he runs the water way too hot, so it scalds on his skin and turns him lobster-red in a matter of moments. he doesn’t care. it makes it hard to think about anything else as he crumbles shitty dollar-store bar soap into his hair (someone finished off the shampoo and left the empty bottle sitting in the shower, god). he breathes in the steam rising in powdery-scented clouds around him and pretends he’s anywhere but here in this house.

(it’s never felt this way to him before - he’d hear kids at school, mickey and mandy sitting with ian in the living room, talk about not wanting to go home, but carl had never known what that was like. he’d always liked his house; comforting, art and signs and stickers and markers covering the walls, familiar pillows on the familiar couch, the hustle and bustle of life blowing through it. the bedroom where lip and ian and liam sleep around him, their breaths soothing white noise. but lately… god, carl doesn’t even know. it’s suffocating, almost. no room to breathe, to think, to jerk off, to get a moment of quiet.)

he climbs out of the shower, doesn’t bother toweling off his dripping hair, and smears a palm over the fogged-over mirror. in the haze of the glass, he looks weird to himself. off. like someone came along and made his irises just a bit too large and dark and painted his skin a few shades paler. he turns away from the mirror and buries his strange face into the towel. 

he wants a drink. his father is an alcoholic, lip is well on his way, and it feels slightly inevitable to carl. especially when he’s already consistently craving the warm liquid mindfuck that a few shots will give him, softening the edges of everything for a while. never long enough. 

carl had his first full beer at eight years old. his first shot of vodka at ten. the past three-odd years he’s been drinking right alongside fiona and lip and ian. maybe it should scare him more than it does. 

he has to go downstairs for a corona, for something to eat so his stomach stops feeling like it’s gnawing in on itself. he pulls on the boxers and shirt he wore that day and steels himself for it. what the fuck else can he do?

 

he’s stopped cold on the stairs when he hears fiona’s voice, sharp and too loud. she sounds like she’s tearing her hands through her hair, probably pacing.

“what the fuck _is this_?” she demands, to silence. carl presses a hand to the stairwell wall. “can someone explain to me what the fuck his problem is?” oh.

“fi…” ian says in this regretful, odd voice. someone else says something, but carl can’t make out the voice or the words. 

“it's not just me, right?” carl doesn’t want to start crying, but her voice is so harsh. “the gunshot thing? all the detentions? _this?_ running away? he’s just so goddamn _moody_.” 

“and he doesn’t _talk_ as much as he used to, have you noticed that?” ian says, sounding worried and sleepy. 

“well-” lip starts, and carl thinks he might say something that’ll talk fiona and ian down. please, lip. carl’s oldest brother clears his throat in that way he has. “maybe it’s not his fault, you know?” carl’s blood goes cold at his tone. there’s a beat of silence down in the kitchen. 

“whaddya mean, lip?” debbie asks. carl leans forward, ears straining and heart hammering against his ribs. _yeah, lip. what do you mean?_

“who does he remind you of?” lip says, softly. carl’s brain is playing catch-up, but not fast enough. what? he’s already sweating, even with beads of water from the shower still drying on his neck.

“oh.” fiona says, suddenly, awfully. _what._ “monica.” she murmurs, so quiet carl almost doesn’t catch it, at the same time that someone else (mandy?) says “ian.”

oh. oh no no no. blood is roaring in carl’s ears. they think he’s _monica?_ they think he’s like ian, who’s problems carl hasn’t even _thought_ about for months, since he got his meds regulated? holy fuck. carl has to sit down, clumsy and hard on the stair step behind him. jesus christ. 

“hey.” ian is saying downstairs, but with no actual bitterness in his voice. it probably was mandy, then. 

“wait.” kevin, unmistakably. “you’re saying he’s… weird in the head too?” 

“ _hey!_ ” ian says again, slightly more venomous this time.”watch it, kev.” 

“sorry, but… really?” a loud swallow, the clank of a glass bottle being set down. a chair scraping back. 

“lip? that’s what you think?” fiona asks, voice trembly. carl can’t take this. he doesn’t know whether to run downstairs - _ha! gotcha! fuck you all!_ \- or up - buried in his sheets, trembling. he doesn’t know when his hands started shaking so hard. 

“i don’t know.” lip says, weirdly calm. so calm it almost makes carl angry. “just… there’s similarities, yeah?”

“yeah.” someone (ian?) breathes out. if it is ian, carl doesn’t know what he’ll do. ian knows what he’s talking about, he has the experience. “but he doesn’t seem to get… fuckin’ manic. least not that we’ve seen.” 

“okay, that’s true.” fiona says, as if that’s good news. “and you and monica always would first. before the drop.” someone _hmmms_ and carl gets the sudden, distinct feeling that he’s a specimen they’re examining on an operating table. about to cut into his guts. 

“right.” debbie says. “but if it’s not that, what the fuck’s wrong with him?”

“wait.” v says (she’s here?), and carl latches onto her voice like a life raft. he remembers her holding him tight, shielding his eyes from the blood and chaos, that time years ago when frank headbutted ian in the nose. he remembers her letting him sleep on her couch when one of his brothers would fill up his bed with a sleepover. veronica. she’s levelheaded, good to him. maybe she’ll say something that actually corrects this situation. “are we sure he actually has a problem? like, couldn’t this just be puberty?” carl feels an instant wash of relief. there. that’s what it is, embarrassing as it might be. that makes perfect sense. 

“could be, but it really seems like he has some kind of anxiety… thing.” ian says, and carl whiplashes back to bone-cold again. 

“like, a panic disorder?” mandy asks. carl doesn’t even understand what those words mean. he wishes mickey was here, maybe. maybe he could make them all shut up.

“maybe, yeah.” ian says. “maybe he’s depressed.” there’s a small litany of noise in response to that; carl can’t hear it over the whiteness buzzing in his ears. he can’t listen to this anymore. 

his feet drive him down the stairs without his brain realizing his mistake until he’s burst out into the kitchen, eyes wet, and everyone crowded at the table (the whole fucking neighborhood, practically) is staring at him with slack jaws. 

“oh _fuck_.” debbie says, her voice tiny as she meets carl’s eyes with this look that says _jesus christ, we didn’t know_. fiona bursts out of her chair like she’s sat on a tack, sending it clattering back onto the tile floor with a bang so loud that carl flinches. 

“carl. did you hear that.” she has a hand twisted in her hair, her voice all flat-affect scary. ian, still sitting at the table, looks five years younger in his open-faced panic. 

“look at his face. he fucking heard.” lip says, and gets clipped in the back of the head by veronica. he winces, rubbing his head, but shuts up. mandy, looking worried in a black dress with her snow boots still on, hisses something that sounds like _you’re a fucking asshole_ at him. 

“carl, we’re sorry.” ian is standing now, his palms flat on the table like he’s giving a rousing life-or-death speech. carl chooses death in this situation. “we don’t think you have a problem.”

“that’s not what it sounded like.” carl croaks, his voice small and scared-sounding, betraying him. 

“carl.” debbie, practically his twin, or people think as much. she looks so sad and scared for him that it makes his heart squeeze. “we’re just trying to help.”

this new part of carl (or maybe it’s always been there, just under the surface) that’s an asshole sneers at her. 

“oh really? by discussing all the ways i’m fucked up when you think i can’t hear?” he’s met with silence. 

“we don’t think you’re fucked up, c.” mandy says finally. it almost softens him; she’s the only one who calls him that. carl doesn’t know what to say, so he just stares at the floor. he feels like he’s being scrutinized on a stage, hundreds of spotlights trained on him.

“want a beer?” fiona says finally, breaking the dead-quiet. and that’s the only thing carl’s heard tonight that makes any sort of sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a plot? idk her!! anyways y’all who commented on the last chapters: those are SO NICE and i LOVE you all tysm i hope you’re still enjoying this


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an update??? i’m as surprised as you guys are

they don’t talk about it at all after that. everyone sits around in the kitchen in relative silence, pretending not to watch carl as he drinks his beer too quickly. then lip goes outside for a smoke and the whole funeral party breaks up like they were just looking for an excuse to. mandy kisses ian on the side of the face and whispers something to him as she walks out, and carl can see where she’s rubbed her mascara off. ian smiles at her, small and secret, and carl feels that stab of jealousy again. 

fiona and kevin are cleaning up the dishes in the sink, making awkwardly stilted conversation that is clearly for carl’s benefit - _catch the game last night? yeah it's too bad about that fumble right after halftime. oh that plate goes above the counter there no one more to the left thanks_ \- as he and v stay seated at the table and debbie and ian disappear upstairs fast. 

veronica is looking at carl like she has something to say to him but doesn't quite know how to word it and it's well after midnight and carl feels about as drained (physically and emotionally) as he ever has in his life. fiona drops a fork into the sink and the clatter makes him jump.

“hey.” v says in this very soft, just-for-him voice. “go get some sleep, okay?” carl loves her in that moment. 

“yeah, c’mon.” fiona pounces, and carl feels a cold, detached anger towards her. her, the ringleader of this whole awful night. he doesn’t want her to have access to him. she doesn’t get to decide what he does and how he feels, not tonight. “want me to walk you up?”

god. like he’s a fucking infant. 

(carl’s chest goes tight at the memory of all of them tiptoeing daintily around ian, talking to him like a child and with those big fake smiles you give toddlers. fuck.)

“no thanks.” he says, unsure of whether he meant for it to sound more cold than that or less. v shoots fiona this look over his head, and he’s grateful. 

she stands on massive heels, pulling down the cuffs of the jacket she didn’t take off: “kev, baby, let’s get going.” her voice is sweet, but her eyes make it clear that it is not a suggestion. 

v hugs carl, then fiona (a whole whispered dialogue passes between them - carl wishes he knew what was said) and then she and kev are breezing out the door and closing it behind them with a heavy clunk. 

he and fiona, alone together in the kitchen. she turns to him, a dish towel over her arm and deep worry etched into her forehead. 

carl remembers fiona at eighteen, skinny skinny with sunken cheeks and eyes from working three jobs just to keep food on the table for the rest of them. she ran track in high school. she has a scar under her chin from falling down the back steps when carl was a baby in a secondhand stroller. she looks so sad that it hits him in the chest like a pistol whipping. 

“i’m sorry we left you out of that conversation.” she says, and it’s probably the right thing to say too, but carl can’t help the emotion (anger? hurt? fear? regret?) that burns under his eyelids. 

“not like i wanna have that fucking conversation.” he mumbles at the scratched-up tabletop.

“okay.” she replies, draping the towel over the edge of the counter. “alright.” a swallow, short fingernails scratching the back of her neck. “i really am sorry, carl.” 

“can you all just leave me the hell alone?” in the empty. deafening silence that follows, something crashes to the ground upstairs and liam squeals. fiona gives carl this long, unwavering look, then turns around and heads up the steps. 

 

no one gets carl out of bed the next morning, so he wakes up late into the sad grey light of the empty bedroom that’s too full of lip’s textbooks and hoodies and liam’s toys and ian’s socks and cds and underwear. he lays in the mess of sheets that make up the top bunk and stares at the water-damaged ceiling for several long minutes. there's a stain above liam’s bed that looks like texas. carl’s mouth is dusty-dry and he's aching for a smoke and a glass of water. the window is fogged-up and streaky from the bleak winter outside. that's how carl feels; all muddled and smeared from some all-powerful source of cold.

he finally slogs down to the bathroom to piss, stepping over a pile of ian’s clothes and a can of lip’s aftershave. it's unnervingly quiet in the house - his siblings must all be out at school and work. back in the bedroom, he unearths his phone from the blankets at the foot of his bed and punches in debbie’s number. she picks up on the third ring.

“i’m in a passing period right now. talk fast.” carl can hear the bustle of the school hallway around her, tinny through the speaker 

“no one got me up for school?” he half-asks, trying in vain to shed his shirt while still holding the phone to his ear.

“fiona told us to let you sleep.” debbie says something to someone else, but all carl catches from it is _bitch!_

“oh,” he says, “okay.” 

“gotta go, carl. there's leftover pizza in the fridge.” she hangs up before he can say anything else. 

 

carl can’t remember the last time he was in this house alone. it’s great and weird in equal parts - he notices the creak of the kitchen floor that he’s never before heard over the room’s usual racket. the dryer rattles in the corner. carl’s breathing sounds out of place. he drinks half a pint of orange juice from the jug, standing over the sink as it dribbles down his chin. he’s trying his best to not think about any of it - about last night’s overheard conversation, about whatever reasons fiona had for letting him stay home today, about how that probably means she thinks he’s really fucked. 

it gets lonely faster than he expects. he burns half an hour in the bathroom with one of lip’s porn magazines and some more time on the couch watching daytime television, but he’s antsy and cooped up. 

out to the roof for a cigarette in the bleak frozen air that finally forces him awake. carl feels strange. he sort of wishes ian was here, so they could go for a run, or debbie, so they could walk to shoplift snacks from the gas station. he sits there, contemplating for a minute, then goes back inside to put on a coat and walk the few blocks to the milkovich house. 

it’s pretty fucking cold out, the residue of the snowstorm still hanging in the sky, but if he walks fast with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his (ian’s) parka, it’s not unbearable. 

it’s a dumb idea, really. he has no idea if mickey or mandy are even at home. it could very well be terry opening the door, ready to knock his teeth out. but carl doesn’t want to spend any more time alone in his freaky-quiet house than he has to. 

the whole street smells of wet, decaying leaves and musty wintery sadness. carl soaks through the toes of his sneakers kicking rocks and the icy banks of snow that are almost gone at the edges of the sidewalk. 

mandy opens the door when he arrives, nose leaky from the cold. she looks pretty, carl thinks. different-pretty, because she doesn’t have her makeup on around her eyes, and she looks all soft and sleepy like she just rolled out of bed to the sound of carl’s knock. 

her forehead wrinkles fast when she sees him, eyebrows going down into a question. 

“carl? what’re you doing here? you okay?” she holds the door wider as she talks, and he slips in past her. 

carl likes the milkovich house, even though it’s even messier and disorienting than his own. there’s a pair of shoes, laces falling apart, sitting on the cluttered kitchen table. someone has stacked half-dented beer cans into a pyramid on the floor by the television. 

“i’m fine.” he responds, shrugging off his coat onto the torn-up couch. “fiona let me stay home.” 

“oh!” she says, like maybe she already knew this was happening. “well, i’m just making breakfast. sausage?” 

“yeah, please.” carl likes mandy a lot. ian used to tease him about having a crush on her, but that was never how it was - not really. he likes her laugh and the things she says and the way she straightens her shoulders when she talks. he likes mickey a whole bunch too. the milkovich family doesn’t get half as much credit as they deserve. 

and, speak of the devil, mickey is swinging open the back door and walking inside with a six pack and a shiner. 

“ _shit_ , mickey, what the fuck did you do?” mandy crosses the kitchen and grabs his face in her hands. he grunts, shaking her off, and sets the beer down at the counter. carl feels a thin rush of pride when mickey nods at him in acknowledgment. 

“fuck off, mands. there was an… altercation.” 

“did you start it?” she demands, back at the pan that’s heating up with butter over the rusted range. 

“ _no._ ” mickey says, all offended. carl snorts a little. 

“gallagher.” mickey turns to him, popping a beer out of the casing. “how’s things go with your family?”

“eh.” carl half-grunts, feeling his cheeks warm up with the attention of both siblings on him. “could’ve been better.” mandy casts her eyes to the floor, looking guilty for having been there. carl isn’t upset with her. 

“okay.” mickey says, all calm and cool, and that, somehow, makes carl feel a lot better about the whole thing. 

“they think i’m depressed.” carl forges ahead, because something about the air in this house, the kitchen with mandy at the stove and mickey tossing a beer over to her, makes him feel like he could say just about anything. 

“well, are you?” mickey asks, ignoring mandy’s stern glance over, and the question knocks the wind out of carl. 

all this, and he never really slowed down enough to consider asking himself that. 

“i don’t know.” but as he’s speaking it aloud, the counter’s edge pressing into his lower back and the smell of the now-sizzling jimmy dean’s in his nose, he thinks he might. “maybe.” 

mickey gives him this slow, contemplative nod, and takes a big swallow of his beer. carl wants one, but doesn’t want to ask for it. 

“okay.” mickey says again, and it’s the right thing to say, again. carl doesn’t know how he does that. mandy turns back towards them, her face looking sort of broken-open somehow in the middle. carl feels a sudden sinking surge of guilt that the worry all over her features is likely about him. 

“i’m not gonna…” carl wants to reassure her that it’s all fine but isn’t quite sure how to do that. he trails off, leaving the room steeped in silence. 

“i mean.” mickey says, kicking off his shoes gracelessly while holding the counter carl’s leaning on for support. “i probably fuckin’ am too.” 

carl nods, speechless and too full with how much he wants to gather everyone in the room up and keep them safe, never out of his sight. 

“okay.”

 

they eat breakfast sitting on the front porch, even though none of the chill has burnt off, with parkas and gloves on and a blanket mandy hauled out from the couch pulled over their knees. carl didn’t realize he was half-starved to death until he takes a mouthful of the grease-gleaming sausage and almost cries. mandy’s voice is shaky with emotion for a little while, and she keeps finding carl’s hand and squeezing it, and leaning into mickey’s side like he might float away. when the quiver fades from her speech, she and mickey are talking about the fight he got into (goons over on thirtieth, something about a drug deal gone wrong, lots of semi-gory details that carl is too busy with his breakfast to sort through). 

“c.” mandy says, in her nice, lilting voice as steam from her coffee mug (which she’s sharing with carl) wafts up around her pale face. 

“yeah?” carl remembers mandy at fifteen years old, sitting on the couch with ian - legs all entwined, laughing like they were dying. he remembers the time she cut her own bangs in their upstairs bathroom. 

“you know we love you, right? and we’re here, like, if you need help, or want to get out of your house, or whatever.” mickey is nodding, about as encouraging as carl has ever seen him be, next to her. carl feels his face split into a grin. 

“thanks. thank you.” he leans into mandy’s shoulder, letting her catch his face in one hand and press a kiss to his temple (a kiss just like she gave ian before walking out of their house last night - she smells like shampoo and secondhand smoke). “i love you guys too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> carl + the milkovich siblings is so important to me bye!! also this isn’t gonna be this feel-good for long lmaoooo sorry


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gallaghers in winter, drinking, smoking, bacon and eggs, fistfights and screaming matches, stories being retold, nicotine, shattering displays of affection, sleep, fragile contentment, alienation, softness.

if carl’s life was a movie, the next month would be the montage of things getting better for the main character, all overlayed with poppy 80s music and ending with them falling, joyfully exhausted, back onto a bed. it’s not quite so dramatic in real life, but winter break begins a week and a half after carl eats breakfast on mickey and mandy’s porch and with that things ease back into a comfortable sort of normal. 

no one brings up the detention-nightmare-freakout-conversation again, at least not around carl, which would maybe be weird if he was thinking about it. he’s not, though.

the first night of winter break, carl comes downstairs from a half-assed game of gin rummy with debbie and ian to a full-blown gallagher-special party. fiona and veronica are dancing in the middle of the living room, couch and coffee table shoved back, and lip and mickey are sitting on the counter, drinking, in a rare display of peace between them. carl sees ian’s face jump into a grin when he sees mickey there, kicking his heels into the cabinet. it’s sweet. 

“babies!” v half-hollers as they jump over the back of the couch where it’s pushed up into the stairs, hopping over to crank the volume on the stereo. debbie goes to hug her, laughing and mouthing along to the music. 

the song is something carl knows by heart because fiona played it so much when he was a kid, in the kitchen as they washed dishes, hauling the stereo out to the back porch in the summers while they swam in the pool. 

ian has bum-rushed mickey and is hanging off him as much as mick will allow, with his half-embarrassed, half-melty smile and a cigarette hanging between his lips. carl watches the tattoos on his fingers as they curl around ian’s right bicep - _fuck u-up_ clashing against soft, worn flannel. ian’s face is flushed pink and glowing as he steals sips of mickey’s beer with this dumbstruck look in his eyes. 

the front door opens to mandy, holding two grocery-store plastic bags, and kevin, with an armful of liquor bottles probably swiped from the alibi. ian leans away from her brother to kiss mandy when she walks up to the counter - right on the lips, which makes everyone in the room holler and mickey roll his eyes with a grin. ian’s drunk. mandy, laughing and getting ian into a headlock, brought chips and dip and two whole frozen pizzas (meat lovers!) that make carl’s mouth water. 

“pizza, seriously?!” fiona’s voice is all loud-liquidy like it is whenever she’s had a couple too many shots. “you’re the best, mandy.” lip and ian slot their eyes over to each other like they haven’t quite forgotten the _skankovich_ incident, but mandy is smiling at fiona like there’s never been a drop of tension between them. 

someone gets the pizza in the oven and the dip opened on the counter, and soon carl is lost in a third beer and chips and queso and music so loud that he can feel the bass line in his veins. 

things could be a lot worse. 

 

they’re all pretty well hungover the next morning, and when carl wakes up mickey is asleep next to ian and mandy is curled up on the floor next to their bed with ian’s pajamas on. lip makes this awful strong coffee that’s actually more or less effective for knocking out carl’s booze headache, and by the time everyone is well enough to start moving again, the snow is coming down and fiona is telling the milkovichs that they are _not_ walking home in this weather, might as well stay another night. mickey and debbie and veronica make dinner from the things in the cupboards (boxed macaroni, instant rice, mashed potatoes) and they all eat in the living room while watching _cosmos_ , and the house is so full and noisy with happy conversation that carl feels like his heart may burst. 

things carry on in that vein through christmas, with the exception of the night frank stumbles home from his latest bender and he and lip get in a fistfight on the front porch that results in fiona screaming so loud at the both of them that house lights up and down the block flicker on. debbie starts crying halfway through it, holding liam tight on her lap, but carl pretends not to notice for her sake. when things break up, frank slogs upstairs, grumbling and smelling like dog shit, and fiona slams the front door loud enough that the cabinets rattle. ian slips away to mickey’s house as quick as he can, and carl wants to say _take me with you_. he and debbie go to bed early that night, in the same room like they used to do when frank and monica were throwing things downstairs and they were too scared to sleep. lip’s face is swollen for a week. 

but that passes like it always does, and they wake up christmas morning to fiona in a santa hat blaring _jingle bell rock_ down the hallway, and carl practically falls flat on his face from the top bunk when lip and ian try to pull him down. they all pile downstairs in their pajamas, and ian is calling mickey and mandy and telling them to come over (“knowing terry they’re getting black eyes for christmas,” is what he says, sadly, when lip questions it). there’s coffee made, and eggnog scalding in a pot on the stove, because fiona still does the thing from when they were all little kids and she’d get up extra early and get everything ready for them, making it all special and festive. fiona was their santa before she even should’ve had to stop believing in it. 

there’s no tree, but carl and debbie hung the strings of lights they found tangled in the basement around the living room and it ended up looking really nice, actually. they’re shoved up together in the couch and chairs, mugs in hands as fiona tells them all the story of the christmas she and lip and ian spent on the street while the two of them were too young to remember it and frank and monica left with the car on a bender. 

“ian was crying, and lip, lip was three fucking years old and holding him in his lap, and, god, it’s snowing… like, the icy kind that soaks into your clothes, we’re sitting there with a baby on the curb.” she takes a drag of her cigarette, eyes bright. the story is spine-shiveringly awful, but the way fiona tells it, hands all animated and a laugh in her voice, makes it one they beg her to tell. ian, at her knee with a cup of coffee between his palms, leans into her leg. 

“and lip keeps asking _fiona, where’s mom, where’s dad, where’d they go?”_ god, it was awful.”

“but then…” lip says, mouth quirking into a smile at the corners. 

“but _then!_ ” fiona repeats, making her voice all announcer-loud and emphasized. “this car pulls up in front of us, this big blue toyota.” 

“and a woman rolls down the window.” ian interjects from the chair where he’s sitting with his knees tucked under him. 

“and she says…” fiona pauses for dramatic effect, and it makes them all giggle like little kids, “ _what are you kids doing out here, don’t you know it’s christmas?_ ” the voice she puts on, high and creaky, makes carl guffaw. everything seems bright and funny in the glow of the lights. 

“and fiona…” lip butts in, grinning with his hair messy and a half-black eye. 

“and i _burst into tears_ , because, _duh!_ i’m a fucking eight year old standing in the snow with my baby siblings, and, _yeah,_ i know it’s christmas! who the fuck says that?” 

“and, and…” ian gasps, eyes wet with laughing. 

“and _fucking ian_ ,” fiona says, jabbing her finger theatrically in his direction, “chooses _that exact second_ to take an explosive shit in lip’s arms.” 

“oh my god.” debbie says, cheeks pink and grinning. 

“and when i say explosive, i mean lip was fucking _covered_. drenched. bathed.” carl is giggling so hard his sides hurt as he leans into lip on the couch. “so, there we are, standing in the snow. and i’m crying, because it’s christmas and we’re stranded on the highway. lip’s crying, because he just got used as a fucking litter box. ian’s crying, cause he’s eleven months old, and the people in the truck just _fucking drive away_. like, they _skid_ , they’re pulling out so fast.” 

“what’d you do?” ian asks, even though he knows the answer. carl takes a sip of his half-coffee, half-eggnog concoction - it’s delicious. 

“i take ian from lip, so all three of us have shit smeared all over us, and we just start _walking_. and this is like, whiteout conditions. it’s so fucking cold. but we just keep going, and we turn off at the next exit.”

“and go into a mcdonald’s.” lip adds. 

“yeah, a mcdonald’s. it’s fucking deserted. no one even looks at us. so i take them into the bathroom and we bathe ian in the sink, and wash out lip’s clothes, and we’re drying everything under the hand dryer.” fiona swallows, waving her burning cig like a baton. “ _but._ fucking but. someone, one of the cashiers i guess, called child protective services. so we’re sitting there on the bathroom floor, making ian a diaper out of toilet paper, when the door bangs open and fucking CPS agents are standing over us.” 

carl notices that he and lip are breathing in time with each other. it’s comforting. 

“and then it’s just _chaos_. they’re driving us to the, like, headquarters, and they’re questioning me about our parents and what happened but i’m so goddamn cold and tired that i can’t think, and ian is still crying - god, you were such a loud baby. they finally got us into a house for the night, somewhere we could stay until frank and monica turned up. and they finally did, and that was the first court hearing, and they got us back a week later. i still can’t really believe they got us back.” fiona’s voice doesn’t have as much brightness in it anymore. ian squeezes her hand. 

“but,” she says, smiling again like she’s sensed that everyone else in the room as picked up on the change in the mood, “the family they put us with was so nice. and they fed us, like, an actual christmas dinner. ham, potatoes, all of it. and the next day the woman went out and bought us new clothes, and she got me a doll, and picture books for lip, blocks for ian. i still have that doll.” 

“fuck,” carl says finally, “that’s fucking crazy.”

“yeah.” fiona says, reaching around lip to squeeze carl’s knee. “it was.”

 

mandy and mickey show up not long after that with a packet of bacon and a couple of cans of those pop-out-and-bake cinnamon rolls. ian gets up and squeezes mickey into a hug, and he lets him. 

“merry christmas, kid!” mandy says to carl as he gets off the couch to hug her. he grins at her while she tousles his hair. 

kev and veronica are summoned for breakfast, and they all eat in the prettily-lit living room with plates of bacon and scrambled eggs and cinnamon rolls in their laps. 

“hey, look.” debbie says at some point, gesturing out the window. “white christmas.” sure enough, the snow is beginning to fall again, loose and soft to the ground, covering everything in a layer of delicate lightness. 

everyone smiles at each other like they’re getting paid to do it. even mickey looks happy, sitting all close to ian on the couch and surreptitiously sharing a mug of eggnog with him. 

mandy is wearing a red dress with sequins around the top, and it’s pretty and catches the light that reflects off the snow outside. carols still play on the radio that sits in the corner. 

they exchange gifts; nothing much, as usual, but everyone cracks up when kevin opens the shiny red-and-green thong fiona gifted him (“festive!”), and _aww_ s when mandy pulls a dainty gold necklace from the box and throws herself into ian’s lap with mascara on her cheeks. 

carl makes out like a bandit, with a couple cool t-shirts and a jackknife from lip, a pair of nice headphones (!!) from ian, a pile of all the candy he loves from debbie, along with some comics and a box of trojan condoms (everyone guffaws at that), and new high-top sneakers from fiona (“and liam!” she says, grinning and pointing to where he scribbled his name at the bottom of the card). from kevin and veronica there’s a pair of tickets to a sox game in january, and mickey silently passes him a plastic baggie with a few well-rolled joints in it.

carl’s about to get up and take a piss when mandy says _wait!_ and bends down to root around in her purse. smiling, she holds out a flat, square package to him, wrapped delicately in brown paper with _for c, much love from mandy xx_ written on top in her pretty girl handwriting. 

he could cry when he gets the paper off, he really could. it’s a mix cd, the songs written on the back on the case in sharpie and the date and title ( _songs for carl in winter_ ) inscribed on the front of the disc. carl doesn’t know how to react; it feels, suddenly, like the most precious thing he’s ever held in his hands. he settles for pulling her into a long, tight hug and murmuring _thank you, mandy_ into her shoulder. when he pulls away, ian’s grinning at them with eyes that look wet, but it could just be the light. 

carl plays the cd in his room so much that, after a while, the beats of the songs pulse constantly just under the skin of his fingertips and chest. 

 

carl gets high and vegges out on the couch six of the seven days that pass after christmas, sometimes with lip, sometimes by himself. ian isn’t in the house much, comes home in the wee hours of the morning and clambers into the bedroom with a big dumb grin on his face and sloppy red hickeys on his neck. carl hears lip teasing him quietly about it in the streetlamp-lit room and smiles at him ceiling. 

new year’s eve is quiet as hell with fiona gone for work (she gets paid double overtime on holidays) and ian down with a head cold, slumped on the couch with blankets thrown over him. debbie keeps brewing this strong-ass tea with lemon and honey and forcing mug after mug of it into him, and carl is sitting at his feet as the tv plays _animal planet_ on mute. lip comes home sometime after dark with korean takeout, and they eat in the living room out of the boxes and debbie asks where they think frank is right now, more as a game to fill time then out of any actual concern.

the countdown till the ball drops starts on tv, finally, and ian is passed out with an open mouth and red nose. debbie drags carl out to the porch by the wrists, and they can tell when the new year rings in from the joyful, drunken yells that resound in the blocks around them. carl tilts his head up into the light-pollution-clouded sky and screams his lungs out as debbie laughs hysterically next to him. 

another year gone with nothing really changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m sorry i haven’t responded to all the more recent comments!! i promise i’ve read/reread/cried over them countless times i love you all So Much and i will get to responding individually. thank you so much for reading!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: a panic attack is described (i used what my own panic attacks feel like to reference, just so y’all know!)

the really fucked up part of it is that things probably could’ve carried on about as good as they’d ever been if what happened didn’t happen. they all, most likely, would’ve forgotten about all the shit and life would’ve gone back to being as normal as it ever was. but carl’s existence is a big awful joke and in the middle of the week after new year’s, monica comes back.

fiona bursts into tears the moment after carl hears the door creak open from where he sits halfway up the stairs, unfinished science homework in his lap. it’s such a bad, brutal sound, one that he associates with bright yellow eviction notices on peeling-paint doors, with counting coins, _pennies_ , onto the sticky grocery store countertop while an impatient line grows behind them, with shaking hands smoothing hair off a too-feverish head that cannot be taken to the hospital, not yet. it’s the sound of lacking, always, always lacking: food, money, safety, stability. 

a mother. 

when he hears monica’s voice, cracking and ruined by a lifetime of the drugs that, in turn, ruined all six of them, carl scrambles backwards up the stairs with a chest that is busting open into a hundred billion pieces.

 _what’s wrong_ , debbie says, and carl doesn’t know why she’s in this room with lip and ian, just slams the door and stands heavily with his back against it, trying to breathe. something passes over lip’s eyes when they meet carl’s, and he thinks his brother knows. 

“uh, monica’s home?” carl says, like that, like a question, and instantly regrets the wording because this is _their_ home, the place they fought tooth and nail to keep. it isn’t hers, never has and never will be. carl’s bottom lip shakes. 

“oh!” ian says, weirdly, in a tone like someone just told him they were getting married. debbie’s eyes, wide and panicked, cut over to him. “you’re kidding.” ian continues, and his voice sounds more correct this time. carl shakes his head fast. 

“jesus _fucking_ christ!” lip bursts out, sounding so angry that carl falls back against the wall again. lip is shirtless and has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. his cheeks and ears are red and his eyes look hollow, drained. “that fucking bitch.”

“lip…” debbie says, because both she and carl still sometimes cling to some fucked up idea that she is still their mom and maybe that counts for something. (carl knows it really doesn’t.)

“what do we do.” ian says, and they all look at lip in the same way that they used to when he’d round them up to help steal snacks from the gas station or trick frank into giving them grocery money or clean up the house so fiona wouldn’t break down after coming home from her night shift. lip is the ringleader. 

“i…” lip says, and it’s terrifying. _i don’t know._

“are you _positive_ it’s her, carl?” debbie asks, grasping at straws. her voice is desperate but carl understands why. 

“yeah. yeah.”

“you saw her?” lip asks, fumbling on the floor under the bunk bed and coming up with a lighter. carl looks away when he notices his brother’s hands shaking. ian is silent and stony-faced on his bed, knees up and arms pulled around them.

carl wonders what it must be like. seeing pieces of yourself in a distorted mirror, in _monica_. 

“no, but… i heard her voice. and fiona was, i mean, fiona started crying.” lip’s head snaps up from his cigarette. 

“ _fuck_. fiona.”

they’re all out the door at once. carl’s heart is in his throat as they rush down the hallway - being near monica always does this to him, always fills his nostrils with thanksgiving turkey and bright, coppery blood. 

“get the fuck out.” ian, at the front of the line, stops short on the stairs when they hear fiona’s voice; it’s no longer tearful, just filled with cold malice. 

“ _fiona._ ” hearing monica speak is like nails on a chalkboard, if the chalkboard was carl’s spine. he wants to run away. “you’re my _family_ , i can’t understand how-”

“no, monica!” fiona’s voice is hinging on a yell now. “we’re not! you forfeited all rights to us when you fucking left us behind, left _me_ to deal with all your shit!” debbie grabs for carl’s hand, on the stair step behind him, and he squeezes back. 

this is the fight, the one they’ve had so many times that it’s almost predictable at this point. predictable, but no less terrifying.

“you know i didn’t want to leave you.”

“you abandoned us.”

ian turns around to look at the rest of them, face pale and drawn, and whispers. “it’s never gonna get easier, right?”

“right.” lip sighs. carl’s still clutching debbie’s hand. “let’s go.”

monica turns to them before they hit the living room floor, and it takes every ounce of control in carl’s body not to spin straight around and sprint up the stairs. her face breaks into a smile, and it’s sort of sickening how much her grin looks like that of his siblings, of his own probably. 

“kids!” she cries, and they all instinctively knit tighter together where they stand just past the stairwell. carl catches fiona’s eyes over their mother’s shoulder. she looks wrecked, exhausted. “oh, you’re all so _big_. how have you been? i want to know everything.” 

“monica.” lip says, voice stone cold, flat. “why the hell did you come back.”

“i-” monica stammers, voice faltering. “i missed you guys.”

“yeah, well.” lip isn’t looking at her, he’s staring at the dirty floor with so much intensity that carl wouldn’t be surprised if he burnt a hole right through it. “that makes one of us.”

“oh, lip, c’mon…” monica says playfully, like he’s just making a joke, ha, and the punchline will come any minute. carl feels like he might throw up. 

_(thanksgiving the blood the crash the blood the smell the way the floor was stained red for months in between the tiles the blood the blood the blood)_

“we don’t want you here.” ian manages, his eyes light and watery and all his similarities to monica hanging out in the air like horrible permanent smoke signals.

monica steps forward, towards them, and it’s like carl still has the blood on his palms, still has the hospital air inside his lungs. 

monica once burnt a half-moon scar into liam’s thigh, smoking while nursing. monica left lip and fiona at a train station overnight in the dead of winter. monica tried to kill herself in their kitchen on thanksgiving day. 

“ _carl_.” she murmurs, reaching out towards him, and he crumples into himself and pulls the shutters. god. god, why is she _here_ , here with scars curving over her wrists still, scars that carl can never not look at. “my baby. how are you?”

carl grips debbie’s hand tighter. both their palms are sweating, grossly and a lot, but he doesn’t want to pull away from what he feels is the last thing tethering him to safety, sense, reason. 

the room is silent for several beats, silent except for fiona’s breathing, loud and strained like she’s just run several blocks to catch the L. when carl was six years old monica crashed their old car with him in the backseat. she was high on PCP (lip told him that two years later) and he spent three months in a sling with stitches aching in his temple. maybe that’s all the more reason why he’s never been able to separate her from destruction, fear, death. (the blood.) carl’s lungs feel like they aren’t taking in enough air no matter how deep he sucks in a breath. 

“carl. give me a hug, won’t you? c’mere, baby.” she’s too close to him, all in his space, and the only thing he feels is _NO_ , no, fuck no. his upper lip has begun to sweat and is everything _loud_ suddenly, his sibling’s breathing, the clink of the washing machine, the traffic outside, far too magnified? 

“don’t touch me.” it’s all he can think to say. monica’s smile barely wavers. still, as if she truly believes they’re all playing one big joke on her, that any second they will forgive her for the years of torment and it will all be… what? fine? carl’s chest is heaving. 

“ _hey._ you heard him, what the fuck.” it’s ian, because monica hasn’t stopped leaning into carl, her arms snaking around his stiff, trembling shoulders and his ears ringing with panic. 

“i’m allowed to hug my son.” she says, and then she is, god, _god_ , her hair in carl’s mouth, tasting like shampoo and turkey they never got to eat until the next day and the bleach fiona scrubbed the floor with for hours upon hours, her back shaking with sobs. carl can’t breathe, he cannot move. his chest hurts so badly all of a sudden that he feels like maybe he should tug on someone’s sleeve and say, uh, maybe we should get to a hospital. 

“not if he doesn’t fucking want you to!” lip shouts, and they’re pulling her off of him (maybe? carl’s vision and brain and the way he is tracking movement and sound has begun to do something weird). it’s like he’s hearing lip through a wind tunnel, from miles away. 

“i just-” monica says, and then debbie gives a short scream and carl’s knees have given out and monica is finally, _finally_ jumping back off him.

“fuck!” fiona yells, her footsteps loud on the tile floor. “what happened?! what the fuck!” carl closes his eyes. he’s dimly aware that his fingers are numb and staticky and that tears are rolling down his cheeks and someone’s fingers are on his face, swiping them away and someone else is yelling and, god, his chest still aches so fucking much that he can’t be sure he isn’t dying. 

ian is yelling, _back, get back, give him room to breathe, fuck_ , and debbie is crying and monica is saying something in a high, fluttering voice until lip says _shut the fuck up_ loudly enough that the tiles of the floor rearrange. 

carl clamps both palms over his face, feeling so inexplicably terrified that it is paralyzing, bigger than anything else in the room, stealing the breath from his lungs and the feeling from his hands. 

what’s happening to him, what the fuck, _what the fuck is happening to him,_ debbie is murmuring and, god, carl wants to say something to comfort her but he feels like he might come flying apart into dust if he takes his palms away from his face. 

_something something_ panic attack? ian says, voice like he’s choking, and it makes carl cry harder through his fingers, shoulders quaking. they were right he is fucked up he is fucked up beyond belief and here he is falling apart on the kitchen floor and holy fucking shit only now is he realizing how much like monica that makes him and maybe under different circumstances it would almost be _funny_ but right now he wants to claw out his eyes and separate his skin from his bones and throw himself into the sea because he does not think he can sustain one more minute of feeling like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew :(( i don’t like how that wrapped but ,,, it’s late and i just wanna post i hope it was Acceptable (and again, i know i’ve been saying this for years: i LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE each and every one of the comments i’ve received SO MUCH - i just haven’t yet gotten around to responding to them all.) anyways, THANK YOU GUYS for reading/liking/commenting. it’s so cool to me that anyone at all likes this.

**Author's Note:**

> this is gonna be a ,, hopefully pretty stocky multi-chapter thing, which i have a TERRIBLE track record of completing, but... we’ll see. thank you all so much for reading. comment and stay tuned!! ;)


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